was that Frodo is reading the Red Book in Bag End, towards the end of The Return of the King. This would mean that the bookend scenes featuring Frodo chronologically take place after 99% of the events depicted in The Lord of the Rings have already occurred, which effectively makes them sequels to the trilogy. The little-used term for a new story taking place partway through an already-published one is 'interquel' – I don't much like the word, and since The Hobbit will be bookended by scenes which occur almost at the end of LotR (as opposed to, say, halfway through it), I thought the term 'sequel' was more fitting.